In this issue, I would like to introduce you to a practical framework you can use to analyze the relative success of a work of architecture. As I pointed out in my article on floor spacing, we expect buildings to conform to particular proportions if they are to ‘look right,’ and any departure from the intuitive norm feels disconcerting to an observer. Sometimes the disorientation is intentional, even expected; more often it is simply a flaw, an ‘unavoidable’ consequence of the false dichotomies imposed by modern construction and design theory. Passersby know that something is out of place, but they often are at a loss to pinpoint where the error occurs.
To ameliorate some of the ambiguity surrounding the art of architectural composition, it is helpful to separate one’s perception of a building into different layers. The idea is to think of the building as responding to three different environmental conditions. First, one considers how the building is integrated with its urban or rural context, how it responds to topographic site conditions, and how it participates in the narrative of a place. The human eye is readily attracted to the out-of-place, the incongruous and the controversial. A building which seeks to exploit this, as some hypermodern buildings do, must be developed with extreme precision and consideration, for the effect is easily botched. As a general case, however, and especially on the campus of Notre Dame, we seek to build in ways that are complementary to the existing narrative.
The new ACE building, which is being constructed adjacent to Brownson Hall and the Earth Sciences building, helps instruct us in the principles of contextual design. Its site is within one of the most complex, coherent, and meaningful groupings of buildings at Notre Dame. It features, in dramatic fashion, the sole significant elevation change on campus: where the plateau falls off towards the lakes. The inner courtyard is a peaceful oasis, giving the whole area a sense of unity and completeness.
Clearly the designers had the spatial experience of this courtyard in mind, as the building is scaled to a single floor on its inward-facing side and anchored with a two-story block at the northwest corner. The volumetric aspect of the ACE building here is appropriate and desirable. On the west façade, however, I believe an opportunity was squandered.
First of all, I want to remind you that no site is perfect. There is always room for improvement, and a successful building not only addresses the strong characteristics of its context, but also responds to this ongoing need for development. The parking lot below the site is one such necessary evil, and the ACE building represented a chance to partially mitigate its impact through conscious design. Instead, the most prominent aspect of the ACE building exudes the banal outcome of simply having ‘happened’. The elevation, which on the courtyard was sensitively managed, is here abandoned to fall three-and-a-half stories until it lands on the pavement below.
The sole aesthetic gesture adorning this otherwise uncompromising yellow cliff is a woefully inadequate thermal window (the name is not related directly to heating, but rather is descriptive of a clerestory window the Romans placed beneath the intrados of the vaulting in their thermal bathhouses). Particularly problematic is the fact that, from the west side, no visual indication is given that the grade rises on the other side of the building, so that the front appears to rise precipitously yet without cause. Had the bottom floor, which is in effect a walk-out basement, been articulated in a stone veneer, it would read as a foundational element, or even better, a retaining wall upon which the brick building was perched.
This seemingly minor adjustment in construction would have had an enormous effect on the reading of the whole. In a single stroke, the formatting of the façade could convey the function of the building as a bulwark holding back the soil, break up the monotony of yellow brick, and express the underlying reason for its towering height to the outside world. Simultaneously, the shorter appearance of the main block would improve the visual presence of the presently under-scaled thermal window.
As a final note, the other two layers of design analysis are the building as a self-contained composition and the pedestrian-scaled detail. I shall resume in the next installment discussing these.
Matthew Balkey is a 4th-year architecture student. Matthew’s father, a civil engineer, reports consulting a dictionary for the technical terms in his son’s articles. Note to Dad: if you can’t find ‘intrados’, e-mail me at mbalkey@nd.edu.
